More and more devices are being replaced with autonomous and semiautonomous electronic devices. This is especially true in the hospitals of today with large arrays of autonomous and semiautonomous electronic devices being found in operating rooms, interventional suites, intensive care wards, emergency rooms, and the like. For example, glass and mercury thermometers are being replaced with electronic thermometers, intravenous drip lines now include electronic monitors and flow regulators, and traditional hand-held surgical instruments are being replaced by computer-assisted medical devices. As more and more autonomous and semiautonomous devices are placed in use it opens opportunities where two or more of the devices cooperate to achieve a common goal.
Consider, for example, a scenario in an operating room or interventional suite where a computer-assisted surgical device with one or more articulated arms is being used to perform a procedure on a patient located on a surgical table having an articulated structure that allows the top of the surgical table to move. When a surgeon and/or other operating room staff want to readjust and/or move the patient using the surgical table, this movement occurs relative to the articulated arms of the computer-assisted surgical device. To avoid causing injury to the patient, damage to the computer-assisted device, and/or damage to the surgical table it is desirable for the computer-assisted surgical device to detect the motion in the surgical table and adjust the articulated arms accordingly. In order to do this effectively, it is often helpful to know the geometric and/or kinematic relationship between the surgical table and the computer-assisted surgical device. One solution to the problem is to have operating room staff manually enter the position and orientation. In practice this may be a cumbersome, impractical, and/or error-prone procedure. Other solutions involve placing the computer-assisted surgical device at a known position and orientation relative to the surgical table, such as by bolting the computer-assisted surgical device to the surgical table and/or using an articulated structure between the computer-assisted surgical device and the surgical table that may be used to determine the position and orientation of the computer-assisted surgical device and the surgical table. Both of these approaches may unreasonably restrict possible positions and orientations of the computer-assisted surgical device that may make it difficult for the computer-assisted surgical device to be effectively used on patients of various sizes and/or for different types of procedures. In addition, these approaches may introduce additional steps that may have to be performed when the computer-assisted surgical device and/surgical table is moved.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have improved systems and methods that determine the position and orientation (i.e., registration) of a computer-assisted surgical device and surgical table.